Le Chat

“I think it’s time I give social media a try,” the message read. Working in PR, it’s hard to predict what self-claimed catastrophe might head your direction. This time? A cat.

Comedic timing, one might add, as I had just wrapped up several social media presentations at the non-profit where I work. We were groveling, urging, and flat out desperately recruiting people to help with spreading our message via tweets and posts. Looks like we had a taker.

The crux of the email focused on one particular cat. This cat is the vagabond feline who roams the parameters of our workplace. His name has endured much scrutiny; 99% of those who reference him call him by the street’s name, 1% call him Garfield. I’ll let you guess the 1%.

The email contained a desperate plea to put out a memo on our face book, and hatch tag it on our twitter account…the cat was missing. Attached were three portraits of the fellow, complete with one in him wearing a photoshopped santa hat.

“Have you heard about the cat?” I asked Stan. Annoyed and disgruntled, he spat back, “cat’s smarter than all of us, probably hiding in the gutter because it’s COLD.”

My department wasn’t the only one to be hit. A request was submitted to notify all employees, countless coffee-goers were stopped in the hall, forced to hear the breaking news. Everyone knew about the cat. And due to its hilarity, we did post the cat on FB.

The next day, the cat chatter was down to a minimum, stopped no doubt by the forces that be realizing the lessened productivity of a staff bent on helping as many humans a day.

As it turned out, a client had visited our campus earlier in the week, saw the creature cowering in the rain, put him inside of her car, and kindly dropped him off at the Humane Society. And since it wouldn’t be right to buy a cat back only to let him stray (and others who are terribly concerned have maxed out their per-household cat limit), we fondly say goodbye to street/G.